Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-LedgerBruce Welch stands near South Orange Avenue an area where he used and sold drugs and was arrested in the past. Bruce Welch wanted to be a writer and he wanted to write about the streets. To do that, he lived the street life. Nobody believed him until he finished the book.

NEWARK — Bruce Welch graduated Jersey City State College with a degree in literature. He loved William Shakespeare’s character development. James Baldwin’s emotional prose swept him away. He couldn’t get enough of Ernest Hemingway’s metaphors and symbolism.

Armed with literary devices from the classics, Welch set out to make his childhood dream real. He was going to be a writer, the mantra he told friends constantly after his mother died when he was in middle school in Newark.

"I wanted to prove to the world what I was made of, and this was my way of doing it,’’ Welch said. "I wanted to be somebody.’’

But how he went about it was not all too inspiring. In fact, his family and friends thought he was full of it and that his dream to be an author was a bunch of you-know-what. It’s one thing to fancy thoughts as a kid to be like the late Donald Goines, a 1970s writer who spun tales about Detroit street life. It’s another thing to think that the only way to write about the streets is to be in the streets.

Who does that?

Welch was the kid who had to be in the house when the streetlight came on. He was the goody-two-shoes kid with goody-two-shoes clothes in the church pew on Sundays. His Uncle Jimbo (James Welch), who raised him after his mother died, wasn’t having anything less than order in his house on South 19th Street. Welch, however, says he was fascinated by the cats with the pimp in their step and the fancy clothes — the ones who got the girls. That’s who he admired, who he wanted to understand. He saw the hustlers, players and drug dealers growing up, but just talking to them apparently wasn’t enough.

BECOMING THE ROLE

So he puffed weed and took notes. He popped pills to fit in, downing 40-ounce brews in high school and college. Then he got lost in his far-fetched research after getting his degree in 1984. He sold heroin, then tried it and got hooked, becoming an addict struggling to get out of the game.

He saw the seedy side of life at Scudder Homes, a Newark public housing development before it was demolished in 1987. He hung out on South Orange Avenue and South 10th Street in Newark, the hot spot where everybody copped. He made trips from Newark to New York, scoring drugs to peddle back here.

It doesn’t make sense, but those who grew up with him saw it play out, doubting he was writing a book at all. How could this joker do that when he was selling, getting high, living a street life that can make you disappear — forever.

"Hell naw, you’re not writing no book,’’ Shariff Spruill said he would tell Welch. "When you write a book, I’ll make a movie. How about that?’’

Pamela Richardson, an old girlfriend he lived with, thought his refrain was an excuse to be in the streets. Robert Broadnax thought the same thing, until he ran into his friend one day on South Orange Avenue and saw him selling drugs.

This wasn’t the childhood friend Broadnax remembers. Welch had been the one who encouraged him to go to college. Welch had goals graduating West Side High School. He was the analytical kid who read a lot. But there he was on the corner, looking grimy, trying to make a sale.

"I didn’t know he would carry it that far,’’ Broadnax said. "I didn’t really believe it. It almost cost him his life.’’

WRITER OR DRUG ADDICT?

Welch was hanging out in a Newark bar one night in June 2001 when he got into an argument with another man. He says they went outside to fight, exchanging more words. The guy left, then came back firing, shooting Welch 11 times. He still has the fleshy scars to prove it. Eleven.

Was it worth it? Even he questioned himself at one point, just like the others.

"Am I using writing as an excuse to be a drug addict or am I a writer who got caught out there?’’ Welch said. "I didn’t know what I was getting myself in for.’’

Welch, 52, has been off drugs 10 years now and lives in Nutley. He has three sons and is a claims adjudicator in the disability department of Social Security.

Last month, Welch was able to prove — to himself, if not to others — that he was somebody. He held a book-signing party at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center — and an unusual party it was. There was food, music and a surprise turnout of 150 people. Friends from the old neighborhood — South 19th Street — flew in from Atlanta, Florida, Chicago and came from all over New Jersey. It was a reunion of the faces he had kept telling that he would be a writer one day.

He saw Broadnax and Spruill and Richardson. Co-workers who prayed for him after he got shot showed up. Everyone scooped up a copy of his novel, "They Made Me an Addict,’’ celebrating his accomplishment well into the night.

"He stuck to his guns,’’ said Gilbert Stewart of Atlanta. "We all slip and fall along the way. It’s what you do when you get up.’’

This is a self-published book, so Welch paid for the celebration himself. The way he sees it, if he sells books, that’s fine, but the real purpose of this party was to be able to say he had written one — it’s part of the dream. At last he could hold it in his hand.